


Medley

by Trillian_Astra



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-03
Updated: 2010-08-03
Packaged: 2017-10-10 22:28:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/105076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trillian_Astra/pseuds/Trillian_Astra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rent!AU, written for a prompt at inception_kink on LJ. Effectively, plot of Rent, characters of Inception.</p><p>Some spoilers for Rent, completely AU for Inception.</p><p>(this is Part 1, btw. Part 2 is TBA)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Medley

Eames woke up as the door opened, and was confused for a moment before he looked down and realised that he'd fallen asleep on the couch. Sighing, he pulled himself up into a sitting position and looked in the direction of the door to see who it was.

He blinked and rubbed a hand over his eyes, not believing what he was seeing.

"_Arthur_?"

Arthur stood just inside the doorway, in an immaculate three-piece suit with a suitcase at his feet and a violin case in one hand.

"Good to see you've been taking good care of this place, Mr Eames."

"I..." Eames got to his feet, "...you didn't say you were coming. How was the clinic?"

"As you would expect. Have you had much work?"

Eames was – ostensibly – an actor, with a love of Shakespeare and a particular obsession with Shakespearean heroines. That was most of the reason he didn't get a lot of work – he was rather too old to convincingly play Viola or Rosalind or Ophelia, and would have been even in sixteenth-century England.

"A couple of commercials."

"That would explain the state of this place."

~~

Arthur had unpacked his suitcase and settled back into the apartment, and was practicing on his violin. Eames had gone out somewhere, he wasn't sure where, but he was glad of the peace.

He was disturbed by a soft tap on the door. Curious, he put the violin down and opened the door to see a girl standing there, shivering.

"Hi," she said, "I live in the apartment downstairs... my heating's off, can I borrow some quarters for the meter?"  
Arthur looked at her for a moment, then smiled a little. "Of course. I don't have many... but we have a heater in here... you can come in and get warm..."

"Really?" she said excitedly, "That would be great."

"Come in then."

She slid past him into the apartment, and positioned herself in front of the heater.

After a few minutes, Arthur said, "How long has your heating been off?"

She shrugged. "A few days."

"You seem familiar."

She frowned. "I do live downstairs."

"I haven't lived here for months."

"You must have seen me around somewhere."

"I'm Arthur," he said.

She smiled. "... Ari. Nice to meet you."

~~

Later, Arthur asked Eames about the girl from downstairs.

"Haven't met her, darling, sorry. Why?"

"Oh. She seemed nice. Familiar, somehow..."

"Arthur, are you still brooding over..." he didn't say the name of Arthur's last girlfriend. He knew it was still raw.

"Hm? No, of course not."

"If you say so."

They both forgot Arthur's brooding when the buzzer went, and they looked out of the window to see Dom and Mal waiting at the main door, Dom in his usual battered old jacket-cargo-pants-and-boots combination and Mal wearing a typically fabulous dress. Eames threw the key down and they let themselves in, and the four of them left their troubles behind for a moment with whiskey and laughter.

~~

The next morning, they had a rather less welcome visitor, in the form of their old flatmate Saito, who had left their carefree lifestyle behind and become, in Eames' words, a corporate sell-out.

Saito had bought the building where their apartment was, and had previously let them live there rent-free. His visit was to tell them that they needed to pay the rent they'd missed, or be kicked out.

Just as they were reeling from that revelation, the phone rang. Arthur picked it up.

"Hello?"

"Arthur, is that you?"

"Robert." You could have cut glass with Arthur's tone. The caller didn't seem to notice. "What did you want?"

"Is he there? I need help with something."

Arthur passed the phone over to Eames. "It's for you."

Eames took it. "Robert, why are you calling?"

"My sound equipment's not working, and my assistant says the engineer hasn't shown up."

"You fired me, darling, how is this anything to do with me?"

"I'll owe you one?"

"Fine. Where do I need to be?"

Robert gave him an address, and Eames hung up without saying goodbye, then grabbed his jacket and headed for the door. "Don't say it," he said as he left.

Arthur chewed his lip nervously.

~~

"I told him not to call you," the young woman in the suit said to Eames as he arrived.

"Yeah, Robert pretty much does what he wants, when he wants."

"I'm sorry he called, I found a replacement engineer... you can go now."

"If you're sure," he said as he turned to leave.

He'd taken only a few steps when she said, "She's late."

He turned around. "All right, let's have a look..."

He spent half an hour checking the sound system and fiddling with various plugs and switches. It almost felt like the old days, when he worked as production manager on Robert's shows to pay the bills when he wasn't acting.

Then Robert had dumped him, and fired him as well a week after that.

"You must be his new girl," he said lightly.

"I suppose so. Ariadne," she said with a smile, holding out a hand.

He shook her hand. "Nice to meet you, love. I hope you know what you're getting into."

For a moment she didn't say anything, then she said hesitantly, "Excuse me?"

"With Robert. He can be... dramatic."

"I know that."

"Does he flirt with other girls? Or boys?"

"Sometimes."

"He ever blown off a date to go out with one of his new friends?"

"...this is weird."

"Not really. It's just the dance he leads you in. He seduces you, pulls you into his orbit, and once you're in you can't get out."

She swallowed. "I know what you mean," she said in a small voice.

"It's a bitch, huh?"

She nodded.

**Author's Note:**

> You can figure it out from the text, but roughly speaking the cast works out like this:  
> Mark - Eames  
> Roger - Arthur  
> Collins - Cobb  
> Angel - Mal  
> Benny - Saito  
> Maureen - Robert
> 
> and Ariadne is a combination of Mimi and Joanne. (...er, yeah)


End file.
